Jeff Oslund

Discipleship Committee Chair

Just a year old, the Discipleship Committee became official on April 7, 2019, when its formation was approved at a congregational meeting. The inauguralcommittee consisted of Faith Bair, Dave Setran, Jeff Oslund (chair), Josh Stringer (pastor of discipleship), Mike Solis and Erick Solomon (both pastoral residents). Our primary responsibility has been to assist Pastor Josh Stringer in planning, implementing and growing the adult discipleship ministries of the church.

To help us think through big picture topics such as philosophy of discipleship, how to evaluate our discipleship culture and the various discipleship “pathways” we wanted to develop, we began by reading and discussing The Vine Project by Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, and Discipling, How to Help Others Follow Jesus by Mark Dever. Springing from the book discussion was a review and update to the Philosophy of Discipleship document including a diagram showing personal discipleship pathways at College Church.

As recommended in The Vine Project, our next major action was to evaluate how well we as a church are growing as disciples and how well we are impacting others for Jesus, by making disciples. It may seem straightforward, but we spent several months brainstorming, writing and rewriting questions, reviewing similar surveys, enlisting members of the congregation to critique our questions and delivery process. We received constructive feedback, made updates and finally rolled out the survey to the church on March 1.

This evaluation and survey phase has been somewhat challenging. Not because of how much time it took to come up with effective questions, but because I had to think through and answer every proposed question for myself. Sure, I felt encouraged by some questions, but I also saw areas of weakness where I needed to grow in my own discipleship and make some changes to have a greater impact for Jesus. I am thankfulthat more than 600 of you filled out the survey, and I hope you, too, were encouraged and challenged as you thought through the survey questions.

“There is so much to be thankful for in the preliminary survey results—so many in our church family regularly reading

We are now starting the process of analyzing and learning from the survey responses. Not unexpectedly, there is much to be thankful for in the preliminary survey results—so many in our church family regularly reading God’s Word, praying and joining in worship. The summary of our responses also points to opportunities for growth.

Our next step is to take what we’ve learned from the survey, pull in help from others in our church family and start to identify ways we as a church can grow in our discipleship and disciple making to have an even greater impact for Christ and his kingdom. We are excited by this goal!